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Book Review by Ida Nasatir
This Army of Israel by
Moshe Pearlman
July 7, 1950—Ida Nasatir book reviews—This
Army of Israel by Moshe Pearlman—Southwestern Jewish Press, page
7: Israel's War of Independence will rank as one of the major events in
Jewish history. Already it has assumed almost Biblical proportions. It has
transmitted an electric shock to the enemies of Israel; it has excited world
Jewry as not other event in modern times and it has overworked the noun
"miracle" and the adjective "miraculous" for more than two
years. In his book, The ARmy of Israel, Moshe Pearlman, the young
Israel official who wrote it, discusses the rise of the army. He talks of
its growth. For instance, Haganah was the Yishuv's prompt answer to the aRab
riots in 1920 and 1921. The volunteers of Israel in the recent war who joined
the Army came from unexpected homes abroad, and for unexpected reasons—all of
them driven by a call of destiny. Today the Army of Israel is generally
regarded as the strongest fighting force in the Middle East. Yet its beginnings
were astonishingly small and modest. Even after an existence of 28 years it was
essentially an underground militia lacking the experience and equipment of a
regular army. However, its growth after its transformation into the army
of Israel shortly after the establishment of the State was meteoric. Very
properly the author opens his narrative with a dramatic account of a defense
outpost (Negba) in the Negev and concludes it with the sweeping victories
in the Negev which brought the soldiers of Israel to the shores of the Red Sea,
opened a window to India and the Far east, thus widening the prospects of the
new nation.